Adelphie Three is not just a restaurant. It is an experience that fully encapsulates traditional Greek culture in a way that places you right along the coast of the gleaming Aegean Sea. The project brief spoke out in volumes of the feelings described above. A family-friendly coastal vibe that feels fresh and open, spacious and reflects the beauty of Greek summers in all their glory.
Curated for the foodies, families and friends who are in no rush, along with a fast-food kiosk, the branding for this project had to encourage community and togetherness in a friendly way using custom branding to create 5 touchpoints, of which 1 needed to be the menu.
The direction of this project was an ultra-modern, affordable yet up-market brand that fully embraces Greek culture and shares the experience with old and new customers of Greek food to get them coming back in the masses. The idea behind the branding for this project was to convey tradition and the rich Greek history in a minimal contemporary style.
Designing for other cultures is like walking on egg shells and requires research, sensitivity and consideration. Given more time, I would love to go back and stretch the idea of Greek culture further beyond the stereotypes as I felt there was a lot more on offer that could have been experimented with.
Formatting the pre-written copy into a beautiful, functional menu was also a challenge. It tested my InDesign skills at the time beyond my prior experience but I learned a considerable amount of useful tricks to make it more efficient for next time. There’s a lot of value in learning through trial and error and experimenting with new formats that force you to think differently.
If I were to continue working on this project, I would have loved to flesh out more brand elements and design interior spaces for the restaurant to really do the branding justice. Creating a website to allow people to reserve a table and check out the menu would also be on the list of items to do, as I see it as a very important touchpoint for the restaurant’s customers to connect with and feel fully involved in the culture prior to any visit.
An iconic and widely recognisable part of Greek culture are the blue roofed buildings in Santorini. Wanting a family-friendly design, I thought a stylised illustration would be inviting and interesting to look at on different touchpoints whilst keeping with the brand colours. The key to getting the style was using basic geometric shapes and very simple highlighting of some buildings to add slight depth, using windows and crosses as little details that any passer-by would be able to identify as the Greek island.
For other brand elements, olive trees were used for their connection with Greece, the home of olive oil. The olive branch was used for highlighting areas of importance in the touchpoints in a way that was elegant and in-line with the traditional Greek culture but subtle and decorative at the same time.
